We Call These Tweezers
by FlamesEmbrace
Summary: It was bad enough that to get Sakura's attention, Rock Lee would be forced to alter his Gaisenseiesque appearance and ruin what, to him, was the epitome of masculine beauty. But did he absolutely need to ask Neji for help? NejiLee, one shot


**We Call These 'Tweezers'**

by Ember

**Summary**: It was bad enough that to get Sakura's attention, Rock Lee would be forced to alter his Gai-sensei-esque appearance and ruin what, to him, was the epitome of masculine beauty. But did he absolutely _need_ to ask Neji for help? NejiLee, one shot

**Warnings**: Boredom fiiiic! Yes, Ember was bored one night and decided to spill this boredom out onto the eyes of a million fangirls and boys across the world. -love- Out-of-character Neji and slight Sakura-bashing. But I love Sakura... ;-; I feel bad for that last one.

**A/N**: I really need sleep. This is all like, what the fuck was I thinking? but at the same time, I love the idea.

Oh, come on. Like you've never wanted to be transported into the manga, shove a pair of tweezers at Lee, and run away screaming to go unf Kiba.

Hmm? That was only me, then? Oh, wow. Don't I feel embarrassed.

Anyway, I like NejiLee. Though... I like SakuLee more. -shrug- In the end, Lee needs lovin'.

¤¤¤¤

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon- fifth, in fact, in a series of beautiful Sunday afternoons that put the 'sun' in Sunday- and, come to think of it, may very well have added the 'day' on there as an afterthought. The sky was blue and cloudless, the sun was bright yellow and shining, and Gai-sensei had called the day off training- resulting, of course, in Rock Lee stretching by the side of the road, getting ready for his afternoon free-time training- which always followed directly after the free-time noon training, subsequent to the free-time morning training, and preceding the free-time evening, night and last-minute-before-bed training. The short breaks were for rest, extra training, eating, reading, and, of course, the very activity he was catching up on now.

Neji would have called it 'stalking.' But Neji wasn't there at the moment.

And Lee knew, though perfectly honest methods (he had, after all, bought Naruto the promised four bowls of ramen after asking, very politely and crisply, for the information, so it wasn't like he had snuck around or anything. It had been in broad daylight- if that was ecchi, then he didn't know what to think) that Sakura walked by here every day on her way to meet Ino for lunch and possibly discuss important Sasuke-stalking methods. Just thinking about it made Lee's stomach twist- he had to stop Sakura from going and perhaps making the perfect plan with which she would finally open Sasuke's eyes to her utter perfection! He grabbed a rock and aimed it at a telephone pole. If he hit it, he would finally win over Sakura...

"Oh, hi, Lee!"

The familiar voice choked Lee, made his heart skip a beat, and made the rock fly about a foot askew of the telephone pole.

"Sakura-chan!" He spun around to face her, his hair moving like a single body around his head, and gave his best good-guy pose, with all his huge heart behind it.

The pose, the smile, the general aura, seemed to put Sakura off. "Ah... I was just going out to lunch."

This was the perfect opportunity! Rocks and telephone poles aside, here was one Rock Lee's perfect chance for getting a date, a real date, a _lunch_ date, with Haruno Sakura, the prettiest girl he knew and would ever meet!

"I wouldn't be much of a gentleman if I didn't offer to come with you and pay!"

Sakura smiled, and Lee's heart plummeted at the _sympathy_ he saw in the expression. He gasped in air, realized there wasn't much room to expand his lungs with his heart taking up all that space in his lower chest, and let it out silently. "And I wouldn't be much of a shinobi if I couldn't take care of myself," Sakura pointed out, delicately.

"Ah. I... suppose that's true."

Sakura shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, then smiled wanly. "Listen, Lee, this is a special friend thing with Ino. Maybe some other time?"

Lee brightened immensely. "Are you asking me out on a date?"

Sakura hurried to amend her mistake. "A _friend_ date, Lee."

"Oh. A friend date." But he wasn't really all as disappointed as he acted. Friend dates could change into real dates much more easily than no date at all!

Sakura turned and left with a quick goodbye, and Lee reached down to grab another rock. If he _missed_ the telephone pole, nothing horrible would happen this evening to ruin his potential date with Sakura-chan!

It was fairly easy to avoid the pole, and Lee left for home in high spirits. Of course, he didn't see the rock bounce off a nearby mailbox and hit the pole from behind, and he was humming too loud and off-key to hear the dull thunk.

¤¤

"Gai-sensei!" The long, drawn-out cry announced Lee's arrival at the training field where Gai could be counted on to be ninety percent of the time. This time, he wasn't training with Lee, like he usually was- this time, he was watching Neji do a couple push-ups, long black hair in a cascade over his shoulders. Lee hesitated and watched his teammate, feeling a twinge of hot jealousy- Sakura would date Neji, if _he_ asked her, he was prettier than Sasuke anyway. Even if he lacked the signature look of their master and sensei, Neji was not an unattractive boy.

"Lee!" cried Gai-sensei. Lee strangled his initial reaction and, delaying the exchange of emotional names, he pulled to a stop in front of his teacher and plowed ahead into the point of his problem, Neji slowly getting up and standing behind Gai while the taijutsu ninja spoke.

"And that's my problem, Gai-sensei!" Lee cried loudly. Neji, he was pretty sure, rolled his eyes, but as always it was kind of hard to tell. Their teacher was unusually quite for a long time, staring at Lee with eyes already starting to tear up.

"Lee," Gai started, after the appropriate dramatic pause and with a tint of emotion coloring his voice, "I can really only think of one piece of advice to give you."

"What is it, Gai-sensei?"

The older shinobi hesitated, then, awkwardly, said, "I've had this exact appearance for nearly thirty-five years, Lee. And I... never did find... that special woman." He paused again, his eyes wide, caught up in the moment. "Sometimes I don't know that even Kakashi finds me worthy as a rival, and sometimes I worry... that you... don't find me..."

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!" The exchange was cut off by Gai continuing along his same thread. "And when I watch you... emulating my appearance- I am glad, because I want to be your role model, and yet... I want you... to find the woman in your life!"

Lee's eyes grew even more impossibly round. "So... you want me... to..."

"I think it's time you were to change your appearance, Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

The building emotion finally broke Gai down. "Lee!" he cried out, raggedly.

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

"I'll come back tomorrow," Neji commented dryly, throwing a towel over his shoulder. "If you think you'll be done..."

"Neji!" Gai yelled in a sudden burst of clarity.

Neji faltered. "...Gai-sensei...?" he offered, hesitantly.

"You can help Lee find a new appearance!"

Although glad he wasn't going to be pulled into a three-way name-yelling festival, this idea, if possible, put Neji on even more awkward footing. "I can do what now?"

Lee fingered his bowl cut and said nothing.

"You can help Lee discover a new inner self, and bring it to the surface, to show his inner beauty without! I know this is something you can do, Neji!"

The Hyuuga hesitated, realized there was no way around it, and finally managed, "Okay..."

"You would do that?" Lee asked him, incredulously.

"Ah..."

"Not yet," Gai interrupted, suddenly serious. Lee and Neji looked up, a little put off by his odd tone of voice. That is to say, Lee was a little put off by his tone of voice, while Neji was a lot put off by the situation in whole.

"What is it, Gai-sensei?" Lee asked after it was obvious that Gai was waiting on the question.

"Lee, before Neji can help you with this, you have to _ask_ him for his help. You can't just take it for granted that he has to help you when you need it."

Lee stared at him, aghast. Did Gai not realize that he was telling him to ask his _eternal rival_ for help in doing something he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to do in the first place? Did Gai think for a second that it was entirely possible for Rock Lee, the beautiful green beast of Konoha, to beg for help from some fate-centric, albeit, in his own, _conventional_ way, also beautiful, Hyuuga?

"Ah... he doesn't have to," Neji put in helpfully.

"Nonsense," Gai said firmly. "Lee, that is your new mission. Before the day is out, I want for you to ask for help from your teammate. After all, if you can't ask favors from your own team, how can you manage to work well together when it really counts?"

"But..." Lee frowned, but couldn't find a flaw in his master's logic. Very well, then. This was just another challenge and should be approached like the hurdle it was. After all, the rock _had_ missed the telephone pole, hadn't it? So nothing too horrible would possibly go wrong. "Very well."

He would have to deal with it. It was just another obstacle in the race towards love.

¤¤¤¤

It was midafternoon before he'd worked up the courage to ask Neji for help.

His eternal rival was walking home from lunch with Shikamaru and Kiba, looking a little worn out from his training earlier but not overly worse for wear. His hair was still immaculate and one could completely ignore the faint bags under his eyes, appreciating the fine lines of his face. Lee frowned. His rival had everything, it seemed, over him- a pretty face that girls seemed to swoon over and talent that he hadn't had to work his whole life for. That was why they were rivals, wasn't it?

Lee hurried to catch up with him; Neji, sensing the awkward mood his teammate was in, slowed to a stop and waited.

"You know, Lee, you don't have to ask," he pointed out, knowing full well what the response would be but knowing he had to say it.

"I _have_ to," Lee insisted, shifting from one foot to the other. "It's what Gai-sensei told me to do. I have to _earn_ my date with Sakura-chan."

The Hyuuga sighed. "Of course you do," he said resignedly.

"Neji..."

The boy in question rolled his eyes unperceptively. "Yes?"

"Will you help me win over Sakura-chan?" Aside from a little stuttering on the first word the question was perfectly delivered, a fact that somewhat surprised both boys, who stood in silence for a second in the middle of the road, watching each other as though something unexpected had happened.

Then Neji sighed again. "Come with me."

¤¤¤¤¤¤

"What is that for?" Lee asked, pointing an accusing finger at the hair drier in Neji's hands. He reached up and brushed along the tight black cap of his hair. "My hair's not wet."

The Hyuuga sighed and plugged the hair drier in, turning it on low and pointing it down, at his hand, testing the warmth of the air. "This isn't for drying your hair, Lee. It's for... changing it."

"Changing it how?" the smaller boy asked, suspicion apparent in his voice. Neji sighed and lifted the nozzle, blowing the gentle stream of air onto Lee's bowl cut.

Nothing, not even a single hair, moved. It was like a caricature, like hair caught in amber.

Neji flicked the power onto medium. Nothing happened.

Neji flicked the power onto high. A dozen or so single hairs lifted into the air, danced half-heartedly, then fluttered back down into their exact original positions and froze still again. Neji stared in absolute disbelief.

"We're going to need more firepower," he said unnecessarily after a second of silence.

Ten minutes found them in the Hyuuga mansion back yard, aiming a roaring leaf-blower at Lee's head. The whole bowlcut of his hair was shifting around his head like a solid mass but not separating, to Neji's frustration. In fact, it took fifteen minutes of blowing and combing and poking before Lee's hair finally fell normally down to his earlobes, hanging in tangled disarray, then another hour or so of combing and a half gallon of hair spray before it was properly spiked and, in a strange way, oddly attractive.

And then it took _another_ twenty waiting for Lee to stop sobbing in front of the mirror.

"My hair was perfect!" he cried out, his face buried in his hands. "Perfect hair modeled after the perfect shinobi; what _happened_ to it?"

Neji closed his eyes, counted to five, and opened them again, reaching out a tentative hand to brush through the disarray he had made of Lee's hair. It wasn't quite long enough to look really _good_, but the improvement was obvious; hanging carelessly down to his earlobes, his hair swept haphazardly around his skull. "It looks better," he said, frankly.

At least that made the taijutsu ninja stop _crying_. Lee's fingers hesitantly followed his teammate's through the black mass. "Do... you think so?"

The Hyuuga thought back to the bowl cut and wondered if he could have made it look _worse_. "Yes." Figuring Lee would be fine on his own for a while, he got up and left the bathroom.

"Where are you going?"

"I have to find something."

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

To say Neji was _enjoying_ this... would have been an interesting thing to say. Because he _wasn't_ enjoying himself; he was fighting against the demons of Lee's entire life, hair gel and misplaced facial hair and huge lower eyelashes under shapeless, colorless eyes. But on the other hand, there was something irrevocably satisfying about the whole affair, about wrestling that damned hair into something that looked presentable. And, with his new weapon held tightly in his hand, he felt ready to take on the rest of the job, ready to finish his latest mission.

Maybe fate _had_ given Lee his current look, but fate also dictated the invention of what Lee would, with proper persuasion, someday regard as the greatest human tool ever created.

"What the hell are those?" Lee asked, sounding mortified and staring in horror at the frail metal jaws his teammate proudly presented to him.

"Lee," Neji said, sounding exasperated and anticipant at the same time, "we call these, 'tweezers'."

"Oh, god," Lee murmured in horror.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

Neji looked up, irritated, and ran his fingers through his long hair, flipping stray locks out of his face. "You have got to stop _crying_," he said, rolling his eyes slightly as his 'eternal rival' looked up and glared at him through red, poofy eyes. "Honestly, Lee. It was about time."

"My beautiful eyebrows," the taijutsu shinobi wailed, burying his face in his hands. "They were perfect!"

"They were huge!"

"Big but beautiful!" Lee was crying again, tears making little shiny tracks down his face. "And my eyelashes! What did you _do_ to them?"

"I ripped them out." Hell would freeze over before he _regretted_ it. In fact, he felt like he'd been holding his breath for the past two _years_ and had only let it out just now, like he'd been waiting for this moment and now that it was here it was a huge relief. Dammit, he was still crying. "We're not done yet. Stop acting like you have tits, you idiot." Maybe Tenten would have kicked him for the comment, but to Neji, Lee _was_ acting like a girl.

"You're not done _yet_?" The red face lifted from his hands and blinked swollen eyes at him.

Neji sighed again. He did that a lot around Lee- although, truth be told, the beautiful green beast of Konoha _did_ look a lot better. Without the huge, square eyebrows he looked more human, and the loss of the lower lashes made him look more adult. His hair added to both, and somewhere inside of him, deep down, under all the squishy parts, a semi-attractive boy was wrestling to be freed. "Nope. Come on." He held a translucent blue case, roughly an inch and a half long, which he popped open in one hand while guiding Lee back into the bathroom with the other.

"What's this?" the taijutsu-ninja asked, trepidiciously, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Contacts." Neji slid them into his teammate's hand.

Lee sounded ridiculously offended when he yelped, "My vision is perfect! I never miss when I'm in target practice with Gai-sensei and if you think your stupid Byakagen is _that_ much better then-"

"Oh, for god's sake. They don't affect your vision, idiot. They change the color of your eyes."

"What's wrong with the color of my eyes!"

"They don't _have_ one."

"You should talk!"

Neji grinned and flicked a lock of hair back behind his ear. "The white is sexy, and that's a quote," he said, simply, distractedly adding eyedrops onto the contacts. Looking up at his teammate in slight surprise, Lee couldn't think of a damn thing to say to that.

"What color are they?" he asked after a second, in regards to the lenses.

"What color do you think they are? Put them in."

"How?"

"You just pick them up like this and... press them up against there."

"Oh my god!"

For somewhere around the thirteenth time- but who was counting?- Neji sighed in exasperation. "Here. Let me do it."

"No! I can do it- let go, Neji!"

"You're going to poke your eye out."

"Ow!"

Five minutes had Rock Lee blinking profusely at the mirror, as if unable to believe that the plastic saucers were actually _in_ his eyes. "Wow," he said after a second, looking left to right to make sure the contacts fit in his eyes- which they did. "They're green."

"No shit." At least he wasn't crying. He might have been scared to.

"So. Are we done?"

"Almost."

The more-or-less happiness melted from Lee's posture. "We're not _done_?"

"No."

"What's left?"

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

A tee-shirt and jeans. Most people were not morbidly, deathly afraid of such things, to the extent of shrieking and pulling back rather than touching them- but then again, most people weren't Rock Lee, for which Neji paused to be grateful for before grabbing his teammate by the arm and wrestling him back to where the clothing was laid out on his bed. "For god's sake, Lee, it's _green_." He pointed at the shirt, an old one he'd never worn after meeting Lee.

"They're... they're..." Lee was pointing at the jeans and obviously trying to articulate just how horrible they were but was having trouble choking out that final adjective. "...blue!"

"Lee, I am NOT letting you walk out of this house wearing green pants." He wasn't a girl but he knew better than _that_, at least, and figured most people did.

"I like my clothes!"

"There are more things to make clothing out of than spandex and I think it's time you broadened your horizons. You came to me for help, Lee, and I'm _trying_ to give it to you."

"I'm not wearing that!"

"Then you're not going to date Sakura." Neji shrugged eloquently, and counted down from ten. On six, the countdown was interrupted.

"Fine. Get out."

"What?"

"Get out. I'm not dressing in front of you."

"You don't have to take off your underwear or anything," Neji replied, but he was already heading for the door. He had the sneaking suspicion that under his pants Lee was wearing tighty-whities and had no interest whatsoever in discovering whether or not that was true. Well, he might have had a slight interest... just morbid curiosity... He peeked over his shoulder just as he reached the door and saw his rival pull off his shirt, wriggling slightly to writhe out of the spandex. He was facing away from the Hyuuga and Neji couldn't see his face, only the disarray of his hair and the lines of his back. Okay, he probably should have known that a ninja only proficient in physical attack would have muscles, but still, that was a lot better than he would have expected from Rock Lee. And then the green beast shifted and the reflection of his face caught in the window.

_Holy fuck. _He looked _different_, he looked a _lot_ better, and... he almost looked...

_Good_.

If it was anyone else, absolutely anyone, it wouldn't be quite enough to be called 'sexy.' But he _was_ Rock Lee, and somehow that changed it. Made it so 'good' just didn't wrap the whole thing up, quite.

He closed the door behind him before he could see if Rock Lee wore briefs instead of boxers.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

"There. I'm done," Lee called from behind the closed door, breaking Neji out of his reverie. The Hyuuga slid the door open, poking his head inside his bedroom. And smiled.

Neji didn't do a whole lot of smiling, and the expression threw Lee off-skelter and disappeared the scowl he had so defensively worn. "What're you smiling about?"

His eternal rival grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the backroom, backing the two of them away from the mirror in order to get the full effect. "Look."

Lee frowned. "It doesn't look like me."

"It looks better."

The frown turned into a scowl, and Lee backed rebelliously away from the odd image in the mirror. "You keep saying that, Neji. But does it look _good_?"

The Hyuuga blanched. He'd really rather not answer that, if it was all the same to Lee. "What do you mean?" he asked, stupidly.

The taijutsu-nin frowned deeper, crossing his arms over his chest. "Do you think it looks good enough that Sakura will want to go out with me? Do I look good enough for her?"

_Does he look good enough for _her? And suddenly, Neji was very, irrationally angry at a certain rose-haired shinobi who was so very much _too good_ for his rival. "Do you look good enough for someone whose too stupid or too arrogant to date someone who doesn't fit a perfect physical description? I don't know; I try and avoid that kind of person."

Lee looked crestfallen and Neji capped his unusual outburst at that. "So you don't think we should have done this at all?" the green beast asked.

Neji shrugged philosophically. "I had fun." He _had_ gotten to rip out his teammate's eyebrows, after all. Then, thinking as he'd had fun and Lee'd just ruined fifteen years of proud imitation and he owed him at least a straight answer, "But, generally... it is best to stay with what fate has given you."

If possible, Lee looked even _more_ crestfallen and nodded. Neji wondered if he should make a remark to the effect of this date being the first, and possibly only time, that Hyuuga Neji and Rock Lee had, have, or will ever agree on anything, then looked at the expression on his teammate's face and decided against it.

Rock Lee sighed and glanced back at his reflection, then over to Neji's, then back, hesitantly, to his. He did look a little more like Neji, the beautiful Neji, who'd already gone out with more girls than Lee had ever _talked_ to- but he didn't _want_ to look like Neji, he wanted to look like himself, who looked like Gai-sensei, who looked like a case into itself. But back to Neji. He was attractive; damn, Sakura had once said, in a fangirl undertone, that he was _hot_ and only one pace behind Sasuke, but he wasn't stuck up, at least not the way most people like Ino and Sakura and Sasuke were, just a little proud, and sometimes quiet. And he'd done a lot for Lee today, even if Gai _had_ told him to and even if it was just short of a command. He heard himself talking before he'd even thought out what he wanted to say. "Okay, let's restate. Does it look good enough... that... you would go out with me?"

Neji turned to stare at him and he looked away, blushing painfully, then blushing more because he was _blushing_, and he was _Rock Lee_ and this was _Hyuuga Neji_ and his _eternal rival_ and dammit, shinobi don't blush!

The moment of uncomfortable silence stretched past the point where any other moment, say, of happiness, or surprise, would have snapped, then, slowly, casting resentful glances over its shoulder, it faded away.

Then the Hyuuga rolled his eyes and glared at the reflection of the two rivals in the mirror. "Come off it. You're _Rock Lee_, and no tweezers will ever be enough to repair that."

Lee felt... disappointed? But why should he feel disappointed? Not only had that question been completely, one-hundred percent _not serious_- honestly, he'd been shitting with Neji, and the damned Hyuuga was stupid to think otherwise, he really was- but he _had_ been expecting the sarcastic answer.

He hadn't been expecting his rival to roughly cup his jawline and lean in to press their mouths together. He should have, but cut him some slack; he still thought he was in the manga and hadn't figured out he was in fact in a fanfic.

"Come to think of it," the Hyuuga purred, "I rather like Rock Lee."

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

"Gai-sensei is going to cry," Lee pointed out quietly, still playing absently with the spiked mess his eternal rival had made out of his perfect hair.

"About what part?" Neji sounded distant but satisfied. Lee hated to admit it, but the Hyuuga had a point- would Gai-sensei be more upset that he looked like a _conventional_ teenager, that his eyebrows were gone, that he was gay, or that his rival had just deflowered them, and worst of all, before they were married, which made him feel simultaneously dirty and strangely excited. Or... would he actually cry from happiness, because his students had found more than simply lukewarm compatibility?

Either way, their teacher was going to be spilling tears, and there was probably going to be some name-yelling, and not in the same way that Neji's name had been more-or-less torn from his mouth a half-hour before.

Ichiraku's ramen loomed over them, the place where Lee was supposed to meet Sakura before his plans changed. It had been Neji's idea to meet her anyway.

"Isn't this a little petty?" Genjutsu had lengthened Lee's face a little and given it slightly more shape, finishing the makeover in Neji's opinion. The Hyuuga looked over at him and tweaked the illusion a little more so the jaw movements would synchronize better with his speaking. "I don't want to hurt Sakura."

They'd been over this already, of course, and as all ideas of 'revenge' washed completely over Lee's head as though he still had a bowl cut for them to slide over, instead of the spikes that really should have caught them, Neji had dismissed it as a little fun and pretty much dragged his teammate down here. He could tell Lee still didn't believe him, but perhaps he was still in a little shock from earlier. He hadn't even protested once during the fact that they were fornicating.

"There she is." Sakura was sitting at the bar, obviously with reinforcements on either side in case Lee decided this was anything more than a 'friend date,' with Ino at her left and Tenten at her right.

"Sakura-chan!" His heart still fluttered when she turned to look at him, though not nearly as much, and he was faced with the earth-shattering realization that his love was rapidly diminishing.

It disappeared with the spit-take. But then, that was somewhat expected.

"Oh my god," Ino cried out spectacularly. "Sakura, hon, you're choking."

Sakura paused in her hacking coughing long enough to shoot her best friend a 'no shit' glare, then pounded her chest with a fist in time to Tenten's fist against her back and slowly sat up. "Lee!" she sputtered, her eyes flickering over to Neji briefly, then back to Lee. With the genjutsu, the only thing wrong with his face was the same of his eyes, but it still looked like _Lee_. And he was still hot. "What... what happened?"

Lee smiled proudly. "Neji happened. Make-over."

Her mouth formed a little 'o' and she nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

"Anyway," the taijutsu-nin continued, looking a little away from Sakura's face, "I just wanted to come and cancel our friend date, Sakura-chan. I have... other plans."

"You... what now?"

Neji took his cue as if reading it off a giant card in the background, grabbed a handful of his teammate's hair, and kissed him roughly.

They left Sakura still scrambling for words.

"That was mean," Lee commented as they walked towards Gai-sensei's house, where after telling him how the make-over had gone Neji intended to leave Lee to get in his free-time afternoon training. The Hyuuga smirked in response. Lee rolled his eyes, then, after a second of silence, continued. "I think I'm going to grow my eyebrows out again."

"Good for you," Neji intoned.

Lee looked at him. "You don't like them better like this?"

The Hyuuga shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me." He'd had the fun of ripping them out and probably would again, but who was he to tell Lee to change what he was born with?

Rock Lee shrugged. "Then I want my hair back to normal, too."

Another shrug in response was his only reply.

"I might leave the contacts in, though."

They made his eyes green, of course he would like them. "Figures."

"You know, if we're boyfriends-" Neji winced away from the term but didn't, for the record, protest to it- "you could take a more proactive stance to all of this."

"And if I'm going to be spending more time with you than normal, you could talk less. You're really very irritating."

"You stuck-up..." Lee's aversion to cursing stopped the insult but his hands still fisted at his sides.

For a third time during that discussion, Neji shrugged. "At least I'm an actual, skilled shinobi."

"You think ninjutsu makes you 'skilled'? I could kick your's with one hand tied behind my back!"

Neji snorted. Lee kicked him in the shin.

_end_


End file.
